{"id":2153,"date":"2013-01-22T20:15:25","date_gmt":"2013-01-23T02:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/?p=2153"},"modified":"2013-01-23T19:37:04","modified_gmt":"2013-01-24T01:37:04","slug":"teaching-mathematics-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/2013\/01\/22\/teaching-mathematics-in-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Mathematics in Canada…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I have been teaching future mathematics and science secondary teachers for the past four months<\/a>. This has been a very special opportunity for me. I had a privilege to spend time with people who all had graduated with science and mathematics B.Sc. degrees from our universities and who are motivated and inspired to teach the next generation… I have a lot of respect for my students as I do believe that teaching mathematics and science is one of the most exciting professions (or should I say life choices) in the world… I would not have chosen this career myself if I didn’t think so. What is even more interesting, is that we have student-teachers from many different countries who have experienced very different mathematics education… We have student-teachers from Taiwan, China, India, Mexico, former USSR (me), Canada. We have student-teachers who traveled a lot and had an opportunity to experience schooling in different countries.<\/p>\n

During our class (which is called Inquiry into Mathematics and Science Education) we discuss different issues. One issue that came up is the gap between East Asian students and other students in Canadian schools. What is going on with our North American born-and-raised students who somehow are convinced that doing math is a special quality that not everybody is born with. We of course can discuss what “doing math” means, but how come so many of out kids fail to master basic mathematics skills and concepts? Do you need to be a genius to do algebra? How come “doing fractions” is considered a “high-level” skill for many otherwise normal people?<\/p>\n

I am biased. I love math. I love mathematics because I can see the beauty of problems (not only because it helps me balance my checkbook), I love mathematical proofs because they have an elegance in them, I love mathematics because it is an intellectual challenge… However, why do I happen to think and feel like that? I do not think I am super-gifted or super-talented in mathematics. I am a normal curious person who had a very supportive environment while growing up (I am lucky to have a very intellectually supportive environment now too) . I think I had a fortune to be born into a family of people who loved mathematics (my mom is a math and physics teacher and my dad is an engineer). Maybe I was fortunate to be born int he USSR (who would have thought I will say it) during the cold war era where and when mathematics and science were valued and girls were considered to be as able to succeed in these fields as the boys.\u00a0 I was fortunate to have teachers who loved math and have family members who “tutored me in math” – my uncle and aunt who both were math and science professors. The word “tutored” meant that they shared with me the excitement of mathematics and science. I still remember how my uncle explained to me the idea of Gauss’s theorem and the concept of electric flux… This was very cool. I had a fortune to be surrounded by people who valued intellectual challenges… How many of our students can say the same thing? What if from the beginning you are surrounded by elementary teachers who hate math but who have to teach it anyways? What if our students’ parents believe that math is something nobody likes but you have to do to get to university? What if their friends hate math as well… So what does it mean to succeed in math? Does doing well on the test mean that you will see the beauty of mathematics and will have pleasant memories of it for the rest of your life?<\/p>\n

As I was listening to the interview on CBC radio<\/a> and heard the calls from the listeners, I felt hurt… I felt pain, the same way I would have felt it if people called and started asking me why we need to spend time on teaching arts? What if arts or music is not a part of your life? Will it affect you? What if not being able to read was considered to be OK? I am not going to discuss critical thinking here, but I just want to say that robbing our kids of a quality inspiring math education doesn’t give them a chance to experience something amazing. To see patterns, to ask interesting questions, to see elegance in the world around us. It is akin to robbing our children of poetry… of music … of love… I also noticed how the interviewer also made it clear that she didn’t have any pleasant memories of her own mathematics education…<\/p>\n

A few days ago my sons asked me if I ever read Shakespeare in English. I haven’t. I grew up reading Romeo and Juliet<\/em> in Russian in translation of one of the greatest Russian poets Boris Pasternak<\/a>. Pasternak helped me enjoy the poetry in translation that I would not have been able to enjoy then… Now, 30 years later, I decided that I am ready for Shakespeare in the original version (luckily I have The Teaching Company courses <\/a>to help me) and I have the Internet to help me translate the words I do not know… It is something I want to do because I was inspired then and I know how beautiful the translation of Shakespeare is into my native tongue. I am not an expert on Shakespearean English, neither am I an English literature educator. Yet, I am a human being who enjoys poetry because I was exposed to it as a child and have very good memories of that encounter…\u00a0 What kind of memories will our kids have from their early childhood encounters with mathematics? If we can translate poetry, why cannot we translate mathematics so the general public will be able to understand and appreciate it? I think there are two reasons. First, not everybody can do the job Pasternak did and secondly, you have to have the people who will be the messengers of this beauty… If I didn’t have parents who bought the books and brought them home and read them with me, the teachers who were excited about Shakespeare and the friends who could recite poems, I probably would not have had any interest in this poet or his poetry… What is the relevance – he lived in a far away land many centuries ago…?\u00a0 Would my life have been any worse because of that? I think yes, but each one of us has to answer this questions for him or herself. So what is your answer about mathematics education…?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been teaching future mathematics and science secondary teachers for the past four months. This has been a very special opportunity for me. I had a privilege to spend time with people who all had graduated with science and… Read moreTeaching Mathematics in Canada…<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[795,6989,236259,236258,6696],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-general-teaching","category-mathematics-education","category-science-and-society","category-science-education","content-layout-excerpt-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2153"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2156,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions\/2156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mmilner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}